Question

Orthopedic surgeon Doug Woolley was frustrated. A bottleneck in the recovery room at the Community Medical Center in Missoula limited the total number of joint replace- ments he could do each week. The system limited him to four procedures, although he himself had time to do at least one more. He turned for help to Cindy Jimmerson, who worked with the hospital to implement a management system called Lean. They began by conducting observations of the system and quickly noticed some key problems. They observed nurses working hard and automatically going "around" barriers without even considering that the barriers could be removed. They identified a few big things that could be improved immediately. One was posting a physician's or nurse's beeper number in an obvious place where it could be immediately seen. Although it seems simple, this prevented a common bottleneck-having to call somebody to find the number. These types of changes were made immediately, and the results were astounding. Patient time in the recovery room went from 90 minutes to 62 minutes, and as a result, the patient's bill went down. The hospital's productivity increased, and now Dr. Woolley is able to perform more procedures per week. Similar benefits are occurring across the country as hospitals and medical centers implement Lean. At Goshen Health System on-time start in the hospital's operating department went from 15% to 80% in only eight weeks after implementing Lean. A team of employees examined the processes. They determined that the factor most

Please read the opening vignette about Community Medical Center in Missoula. How have they used lean management approaches to efficiently utilize resources (human resources and processes), eliminate waste, incorporate Total Quality Management, and also motivated the Respect for People

I have uploaded the figures from 10.1 to 10.6 to give you more details. Please use them when explaining the question. Thank you!

Answer 1

Introduction: Basically Lean and Six Sigma are the processes in which there is more focus on effectiveness and efficiency on the tasks or work by eliminating wastes so that the customers get more better and satisfactory results.In the hospital of Community Medical Centre in Missoula where Orthopaedic surgeon Doug Woolley were facing a lot of problems and later he applied Lean and Six Sigma in their Medical Centre after that the things become better in their medical centre and more people (Customers) got benefited from it.

Lean Management approaches: There are a lot of Lean and Six Sigma techniques are available which can be used by the companies and through which the processes becomes more efficient and effective,better utilization of resources,elimination of wastes ,reduction in errors,increases in productivity and the end customers get better results. In the case of Orthopaedic surgeon has also used the Lean and Six Sigma techniques to get the better results. He has used the techniques to make changes like :-

• Problem-Observation of the key problems like they observed that the nurses were doing work hard around and still there were barriers.
• Solution -They found a solution for this that they give the nurses beeper's number through which if any patient needs nurses they find the number and call the nurses for that specific time.
• Results - Increased in productivity.Patient's time recovery down from 90 minutes to 62 minutes,Patient's bill down. And Dr Woolley has started lot of procedures in a day.
• Lean Technique Used- Search for the problem,Elimination of waste,Reduction in time and increases the productivity of the hospital and the doctor.Applied TQM (Total Quality Management) TQM they used for set the process and for continuous improvement.

Total Quality Management (TQM)- TQM is the lean concept in which there is the continuous improvement in the processes and give better efficient and effective results to the end customers.It also ensures that the employees should be well trained to complete the tasks. Here in the case of Medical Centre in Missoula the hospital staff,nurses and even the doctor became trained and started treating the patients and the results were like amazing. Doctor has started multiple procedures in a day , patient's recovery got fast , patient's bill went down, reduced the average room turnover etc. So TQM utilizes the other lean processes like Kaizen Theory,kanban flow , 5S etc. Here they have used Kanban flow.

Kanban Flow: In TQM there is a lean process of Kanban flow which means that its a technique which helps the team members to visualize and make coordination between them so that the process becomes more effective and give better results to the end customers.Here, they have used Kanban flow in which the hospital staff,employees got good coordination between them to improve the process and to make sure that there should be a continuous improvement. And to give more Visibility,Flexibility and respect to the people with the best results.

Summary: Lean and Six Sigma are the best methods which are used in the industries and the companies to make their processes effective and efficient, reduction in errors,maximum utilization of resources,elimination of waste,coordination between the team members,smooth functioning of the process, maximize the better results,continuous improvement etc.